January 10, 2013

Consider the difference between the 1950s and 1960s and the 21st century.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the median income allowed you to live with a single earner -- normally the husband, with the wife typically working as homemaker -- and roughly three children. It permitted the purchase of modest tract housing, one late model car and an older one. It allowed a driving vacation somewhere and, with care, some savings as well. It was not an easy life and many luxuries were denied us, but it wasn't a bad life at all.

Where a single earner could support a middle class family in the generation after World War II, it now took at least two earners. That meant that the rise of the double-income family corresponded with the decline of the middle class. The lower you go on the income scale, the more likely you are to be a single mother. That shift away from social pressure for two parent homes was certainly part of the problem.

What we are facing now is a structural shift, in which the middle class' center, not because of laziness or stupidity, is shifting downward in terms of standard of living.

July 20, 2012

Our concept of revival is too small if we resign to the thinking, “If we just get people saved, then abortion will simply take care of itself.” Believe me, I wish that were true. But history tells a different story. So does the fact that abortion is rampant in our churches.